My life as a Mum to an angel

First of all let me apologise for taking so long to sit down and blog. I have been doing so much better these days, not harping over my grief, partly because I let a huge weight go when I visited my mum and dad in England, but also partly because I think my head has accepted that my time is up, no more grieving for me, it is my husband’s turn to express his grief and learn to live with what has happened to us and to our son. It is his time to have that internal struggle that he has so graciously put on the back burner while I dealt with mine. Seems only one of us in this house can be an emotional wreck at any given time, and bless his heart, it seems to be me most of the time, which I absolutely hate.

Anyway, this is all beside the point and not the reason why I have sat down to blog today. I have been trying to keep tabs on what has been going on in the motherland. I hear very little on the media here but get a lot of information from Facebook and other social network sites, thankfully. I am not sure exactly why things over in Britain got so massively crazy but it seems to have all started because someone got shot by the police for some reason or another which I still have not heard. It seems the person was black, in a black area which is renowned for drug, gun and sex crimes. The police were apparently there to fight the large amount of crime in that area when the guy was shot and killed. Now, I am not sure why this had such a huge ripple effect across the UK. The only thing I can think of is that there are some people out there who are just looking for an excuse and this gave it to them. Then we get mass hysteria and the ability to get lost in a crowd, all reasons why people would loot en mass. That added to tough economic times, thrill factors, low education levels, lack of discipline, poor policing blah blah blah. I have to say I am really not that surprised and I think the USA would be fools if they didn’t prick up their ears and pay very careful attention to what is going on over there.

On the other side of this story there is an amazing thing occurring that I thought had about vanished from modern society, that is the sense of community. I know people have a pride in their roots, where they were born, raised, places they love/have memories in but I was made all warm and fuzzy inside to see people standing up and uniting against these looters and rioters and saying “bring it on” if you loot, riot and burn we will clean it up. Sounds futile but it sends out a very powerful message that communities will not be beaten down by those who have no love or respect for these places. It’s like standing up to the bullies and I love it. Its very hard to do but as a united front of a community its very powerful and very inspiring. Here was me thinking that women’s liberation had broken down our sense of community and destroyed neighbourhoods so much so that we have become intraverted and intraspective, but that’s a whole other blog I suppose.

I love my home land. I am very proud to be English. We have a very special culture ( as does every country) that I miss beyond expression, I drag small pieces of it with me as a comfort to my cultural side in food and on you tube and BBC America. I just wonder why it is if people are so unhappy in their lives that these are the things they feel they need to do, why not use that energy to create something positive instead of negative. Probably because thankfully I have never had to see the things they have or do the things they have just to survive and that gives me an unsteady soap box from which to speak but I can never walk in their shoes, but I believe that people can drag themselves out of the shit and make something of themselves if they really want to.

Comments on: "What’s going on in England" (4)

What is going on you ask ? here are a few pointers to consider :- The tory government has a very sad history with cut backs and it aways will have i remember Edward Heaths infamous time in power and the Suez crisis (yes OIL again) he decided to put Britain on a 3 day week putting millions out work in the 70’s then he didn’t serve a full 5 year term then !!! but after he got kicked out Britain picked it self up over the over the next decade until a certain famous ?infamous female took over in 1979 the IRON LADY she destroyed many lives of coal miners of whuch i was one before her reign but there was no work for me anyway everywhere i got employed it became a victim of closure and finally there was no w9rk anywhere i was reduced to spending life on the dole until retirement age of 65 .Did i go on the rampage DEFINETLY NO !!!!!!!! AND YES I WAS MARRIED with 2 chidren boy and girl my wife was then a nurse in the N.H.S and we had no option but to live off her salary which was not well paid then and it was monthly what we could not afford was left on shop shelves not stolen like it is in the recent riots up and down England in Aug 2011. The problem today is people have a changed their culture by wanting the latest in technology and pay on a Credit card monthly which have super interest rates !!! on which people seem to default on because times become difficult such as vthe veconomy falters \and people take longer to pay off t6here4by the4 interest rate/rates go higer awnd higher so it becomes more expensive and the interest rate is more expensive than the goods purchased by thie method the longer one pays the interest the more expensive it becomes in the meantime the goods bnecome devalued this is called THROWING GOOD MONEY AFTER BAD think about it ! Hence the problems are here again by rioting /looting arson and destruction poor discipline !!!!

I think you are absolutely right dad, we have become a world of people who want these things because they are convinced by society/ media/ peers/ whatever that they have to have these things in order to “fit in” or “belong” but they have no means of being able to afford them unless they beg, steal or cheat to get them.
It’s a very sorry situation and it makes me sad and I don’t know what we can do about it. I am not making excuses for them because people can achieve great things even from low places but they have to work harder than those who have a slightly better starting place to obtain them.

Well it appears that most of the so called rioters had got previous convictions and are the underground CRIMINAL FRATERNITY which operates throughout the U.K . I have always believed and said that Britain runs on crime so whois right and who is wrong by sweeping it under the carpet please tell me because I would like to know too !